


sugar, we're goin' down

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 03:45:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6103765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I've never dueled a dragon before."</p><p>How it all went down: the duel, and Emon's walls too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sugar, we're goin' down

**Author's Note:**

> _Critical Role_ characters do not belong to me and I am making no financial profit off this work of fan fiction. I merely hope to obtain enough broken hearts to make a little angstthrone for myself.
> 
> * * *

In the aftermath of the dragons’ initial attacks, Gilmore stumbles into a side street, eyes darting around frantically for any sight of anyone he knows. His heartbeat resonates back off the ringing in his ears; he shakes his head in a futile attempt to clear the noise away. He draws a deep breath as soon as he judges he’s far enough away from the green dragon’s foul fumes, but the smell still hangs dense in the air.

A twist of one of his jeweled rings and a command word later and he’s as armored as he can be under the circumstances. He can hear other sounds over the ringing now and most of them are screaming. Allura’s tower continues to fall, and as the stones come down more of the city around it is destroyed. The odds are against him. The odds are against all of Emon. Nonetheless, he turns back toward the chaos.

The guards are clad in red on red now, most of them sprawled unmoving on the ground. One of them reaches out a hand to him, and Gilmore drops to one knee, taking his hand.

“Kill me,” the guard croaks.

Gilmore blinks. A vague memory stirs. He didn’t get to where he is today by solely being pent up in a tower studying, after all. The guard is bleeding out fast. Gilmore’s seen this kind of bleeding before.

“I can’t,” he says honestly. _Maybe once upon a time, but not now_. “You’ll be all right.” Assuming that the guard’s definition of _all right_ includes _dead within seconds_.

The guard’s face twists in pain. “Dragon,” he says. “Fucking huge one.”

“I know.”

“I never thought... never thought I’d see....” The guard’s last words and last breath bubble with blood. Gilmore closes the man’s eyes and rises to move on.

Sovereign Uriel’s stage is a sizzling wreckage of what was once a very nice display. Gilmore tries not to calculate the cost to replace the velvet swags and rare woods, steering clear of the center of the square. Good fortune or the benevolence of some deity—Bahamut, perhaps—keeps the green dragon’s eyes averted from him.

He can’t see

( _Vax_ )

the members of Vox Machina anywhere, but that doesn’t mean anything. The square is littered with bodies and any one, any one of them—

But he’s alive, and if he is, others might be.

He comes across Empress Salda first. She’s huddled close to a wall, eyes wide and staring at nothing. Her three children are pressed tightly up against her.

“Empress,” he says.

“Uriel?” She looks up at him. “Oh... have you seen my husband?” Her tone is too matter-of-fact to indicate anything other than that she’s in shock. “He was here a moment ago.”

Gilmore gets his hand under her arm. “Come on, sweetheart. Up you get.”

She bats at his shoulder. “I’m not going without Uriel...”

“Yes, you are.” He hoists her arm over his shoulders and looks down at the children. “Come on. We’re going away from the dragon.”

They’re all three too petrified to speak, but they follow him like ducklings.

Gilmore’s not so fond of the idea of making his way out of the district now that he has company, but staying put isn’t an option. The heart of Emon is coming down around them. In fact, as they run from the shelter of one building to the next, he hears the scraping rumble of stone under claws, and a rising, drilling shriek.

“ _Uriel_!” Salda screams.

Gilmore risks a look back. The dragon is a silhouette against the sun and as such he can’t see which one it is, but the thunder of the wall crumbling beneath it means that it doesn’t matter. If the Empress is right and Uriel is back there, then there is very little chance that he’s still alive.

He hurries them through the streets. He’s so busy looking up that he almost bowls over a small cloaked figure that comes darting out of an alley.

“Oh!”

“Empress?” The figure’s stature is small, but his voice is that of an adult. Gilmore looks down and immediately places the face: Seeker Asum. “Empress!”

“Asum! Have you seen Uriel?”

Asum meets Gilmore’s eyes and Gilmore shakes his head very slightly.

“No, my lady, but I’m sure he’s fine,” Asum says soothingly. He pats her hand and she grips it—quite hard judging from the halfling’s sudden expression of pain. “We’d better get to shelter, yes? It’s not safe out here.”

“We’re on our way to shelter,” Gilmore says, hoping it’s true. With the way everything is falling apart, _shelter_ may not necessarily mean _safety_.

Salda lets go of Asum’s hand and he takes point, offering them a modicum of security that Gilmore is relieved to have. Asum checks each major cross-street for whatever hazards might be waiting, particularly of the winged variety, and then beckons the rest of them on.

Suddenly there’s someone ahead of them on the street they’re using to exit the district, running full pelt toward them. Gilmore sees a flash of scales and draconic features and goes for his wand. But Asum calls out with relief, “Tofor!”

The dragonborn—and it is her, not one of the dragons magically diminished; Gilmore’s ashamed of himself for even thinking it—pulls up a few feet short of them. “Empress,” she says with a bow. “Children.” Her eyes skip over Gilmore to Asum. “We must hurry. Is Uriel—”

“He’s fine!” Gilmore says with false cheer, putting the truth into his gaze as she deigns to meet his eyes. “He’ll be along shortly.”

“Oh, good.” Tofor doesn’t try to get the real story out of him. She drops back to ride drogue, and the group hurry out of the district.

* * *

To Gilmore’s surprise, his shop is still there. For now. There’s a lot of damage to other parts of Abadar’s Promenade; fire and ice and shattered stones. People he’s worked alongside for years stand staring at their livelihoods going up in flames. Gilmore tries to speak to one of them and gets no response. There are ways to help people in shock, but right now he has his royal charges, and they have to be his priority.

To his further, short-lived surprise, Sherri is also still there. As soon as he pushes through the beaded curtains into the shop he’s met with a blinding flash of light and the unmistakable jab of one of his own magical quarterstaves to the chest.

“Oh, it’s you,” Sherri says, her tone disapproving, as if to say _you’re running late, Shaun, another night of excess at the tavern?_ instead of anything relating to dragons or the city falling asunder around them. “I’ve got the trapdoor open.”

Gilmore blinks the aftershocks of light away and looks around. Nothing is disturbed; Sherri’s a formidable foe when she’s roused. Asum is giving her an outright admiring stare. Sherri twitches the staff in his direction. “Let’s go,” she says, and just like that Gilmore’s tenuous control of the situation is snatched away by his ever-capable assistant.

“I’m going back out there,” he says.

“You what?” Sherri sounds disconcerted. “You can’t, Gilmore— _Shaun_.”

“There must be more people alive. I can’t just leave them.”

“I’m going as well,” Tofor adds.

“And I,” says Asum.

Salda looks at the three of them and then at her three children. “I—”

“ _You_ , Empress, are not going anywhere,” Sherri says firmly, catching her hand. “Except down this ladder and into our lovely bunker, which has all the modern conveniences, like _not being attacked by dragons_.” Gilmore’s impressed by how even her tone remains up to the last few words. She looks back at him. “Shaun, I swear to all the gods, if you don’t come back—”

Gilmore stops her with a finger over her lips and kisses her cheek. “Just take care of them. I’ll be back. Uriel’s still out there.”

Sherri nods and turns to hustle what’s left of the royal family down to the bunker. Gilmore looks from Tofor to Asum, seeing their need to be out in the city.

“Meet back here in an hour—no, two hours, whatever else happens, and we’ll each report in,” Asum says. Tofor nods tersely and takes off running to the north without a word.

“I have to find Uriel for her,” Gilmore says.

“We don’t know where he is,” Asum says.

“I think I might.”

Asum gives him an odd look. “Then why didn’t you say so sooner?”

“Because I’m reasonably certain he’s dead.” Gilmore shakes a wand out of his sleeve. “But I can at least make sure that his body isn’t desecrated.”

“I should really—”

“Two hours,” Gilmore says, darting away and through the main bazaar before Asum can say anything.

* * *

The Cloudtop District is alarmingly empty of people. Oh, of course many of them ran—he’s seen them, seen the erratic flow of people trying to avoid the attention of the four beasts overrunning Emon.

The thing is that it’s empty of _people_ , but far too full of _bodies_.

Chromatic dragons come with their own array of natural weaponry, depending on the type. Gilmore sees the aftereffects of them all as he wends his way through the district back toward where he thinks Uriel is—or was. Somehow the bodies that were snap-frozen into perfect petrified ice sculptures are the worst. Gas inhalation, burns, even acid damage can all be healed or at least tended. This instant transformation from alive to dead is uncanny.

He finds Uriel about where he’d expected to. Salda had been right when she’d identified the shriek as his. It doesn’t look like they could have done anything even if they had turned back immediately, though: from the way Uriel’s been torn apart it he looks like a mouse that’s been played with by a particularly vicious cat. Gilmore’s grateful that Salda and the children didn’t see this, as he turns aside to vomit in the gutter.

“I’m sorry, my liege,” he murmurs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and reaching down to close Uriel’s eyes. “I’m so sorry.” He tucks what’s left of Uriel’s robes around him, then takes a step back and draws his wand. The flames take Uriel’s body swiftly. He’s not a religious man by nature, but Pike’s earnest little face comes to mind in this moment. “Sarenrae keep and protect you.”

It’s not just Uriel that he’s worried about, though, and now that he’s done what he has, Gilmore figures he can afford to be a little more selfish in his priorities. Not to mention, he thinks as he sprints toward the city square, stupid.

He has to know, though. If there’s any chance, _any_ chance at all, that Vox Machina still live...

There are bodies in the square. So many. Gilmore calls out the names of his friends with absolutely no conviction that he’ll get a response, moving from group to group of corpses as he does so. There are a few opportunistic carrion birds perched here and there already and he blasts them with his wand. The scorching lines of fire pick two off before the others take to the air, screeching and cawing. Gilmore grins fiercely to himself. He can do this at least, keep the dead from being desecrated.

But there are far larger things with wings that can do the real damage here.

There’s a heavy _whoosh_ behind him and the crack of stone being punctured by claws. Gilmore knows he should run, knows he _can’t_ run, and so turns around, wand still in his hand.

This time he’s the mouse and the red dragon perched on a rooftop and looking down at him with what appears to be a surprisingly indulgent expression is the cat.

“Hello, little firebreath,” the dragon purrs.

Gilmore opens his mouth with no idea of what’s going to come out, and what he says is, “Do you and your friends have any idea how much this is going to cost to repair?”

The dragon throws its head back and its laugh is the sound of a raging wildfire. Gilmore is under the impression that red dragons are usually more the bite first, talk never type, but maybe when a dragon reaches the age that this one has, launching straight into ripping and shredding has lost its appeal.

It’s another cat and mouse tactic. But it’s giving this particular mouse time to recall what else he knows of these creatures, and to tuck his wand away, because a little firebreathing mouse isn’t going to do anything against this kind of dragon. He shakes his sleeves out—nothing up these, ladies and gentlemen—and takes a prudent step backward.

“What treasure do you hunt, little firebreath?” the dragon rumbles. “What gold or gems or jewels brings you here, under my shadow?” It has a bizarre pattern of markings across its chest, as if it’s got extra armor there; the markings seem to pulse with power.

“There are more important treasures than baubles,” Gilmore says.

In this moment he’s not Gilmore the salesman, coming out from behind the counter of Gilmore’s Glorious Goods to dazzle a customer with his smile and smooth words. He’s just Shaun, novice wizard on his first adventure. Staring down a pack of kobolds, shoulder to clueless shoulder with his equally stupidly brave companions, just seconds away from his first time watching an injured friend fall.

(He never thought he’d miss kobolds.)

The dragon snorts disbelief. “ _Baubles_?”

Gilmore crosses his arms, sliding another step back, under no illusion that the wall tenuously clinging to the concept of “vertical” that he’s aiming to use as cover is going to stay upright for long. “Baubles.”

He’s heard that red dragons don’t use their fiery breath as a first line of attack, preferring to go in teeth and claws first, so as not to destroy any

( _trinkets_ )

treasure their target might be carrying.

Apparently this red dragon didn’t get that memo, because the next thing Gilmore knows he’s knocked back by an incredible rush of heat. Fortunately for him, the pain of the radiant heat sends him diving for cover a split second before the flame itself can hit.

They’re done with words now.

Gilmore pops up from behind the wall and raises his hand, targeting where he last saw the dragon. This would be harder with something smaller, like a kobold, but the thing about colossal fuck-off dragons is that they’re also colossal fuck-off targets. The barrage of sleet that he hits it with doesn’t miss. Ice pelts down around the dragon, which is now semi-shrouded in gray mist. The dragon roars and kicks up a welter of flagstones in his direction. Of _course_ the damn thing can still see. A chunk of one stone almost takes his head off, digging a furrow across his scalp.

Logic dictates that this is the part where he should hike up his robes and run like he’s actually on fire. But the thing about logic is that it often vanishes in times of crisis. All Gilmore can think is that this is his home, his city, his people, and so he casts another spell, targeting the hulking shape in the fog. _Thank you, suspiciously shiny dragon belly._

He can only imagine what it must be like to be a being so attuned to fire and suddenly be not only in the middle of a bitterly cold downpour, but then targeted directly with a further freezing spell. Gilmore brings his hands to his cheeks, hoping they’ll cool the burning there from the radiant heat, but while they’ve directed the spells they are not themselves cold. And he’s not going out there to splash his face.

“Little. Firebreath.” The dragon just sounds furious now, rather than at all teasing or amused. It rakes its claws across the stones again, but this time Gilmore ducks before anything can hit him.

“It’s ice, you blithering idiot,” he says somewhat hysterically, letting another spell go. It sure as all the hells _feels_ like his hands should be cold from this. After this casting he ducks and scurries sideways, mousing along the wall.

The wall that abruptly resigns as a wall and becomes a formless pile of rubble.

Gilmore freezes in place like every other prey animal ever, looking up and up and up at the beast looming over him. It still has a chunk of stone clenched in one claw. It squeezes and the stone is reduced to pebbles that shower down around him. Some bounce off him, but he barely notices.

“Do you have any more spells, little firebreath?” the dragon inquires.

Gilmore does, actually, but he doesn’t really want to enumerate them to anything that’s currently trying to kill him. He lifts his hands in a classic (and mostly superficial) casting posture and is gratified to see the dragon flinch for a second.

He gets off a spray of magic missiles into the dragon’s eyes, and that distraction might be all that keeps him from outright disembowelment.

Then it’s on him, the other claw swiping almost casually across his torso, raking him open sternum to hip. Thanks to his magical armor it doesn’t entirely put his insides on the outside, but from the blazing agony that rips through him it might as well. He glances down to see blood and torn flesh.

“Give up?”

“Not on your life, you oversized newt,” Gilmore returns, and flings up a wall of ice between them. It won’t hold the dragon for long, but if he’s lucky it may give others an opportunity to attack. He scoots backward in an attempt to find more cover and plan out his next move.

He only realizes just how hurt he is when his teleport spell kicks in—the one that’s contingent on him being irrevocably close to death.

* * *

Sherri screams when she sees him. Gilmore can’t blame her. His robes are shredded, his torso isn’t much better, and now that he’s

(safely?)

away from the battlefield, adrenaline draining away, he can feel where those pebbles hit and they feel more like boulders. His head is throbbing and his face feels scorched. Empress Salda’s looking at him with her hands over her mouth. The children are, thankfully, asleep in an exhausted little pile of bodies.

“Oh, Shaun, no.” Sherri hurries to fold a blanket for him to lie on and brings him a healing potion. Not the strongest he’s ever had. He needs a divine healer. Truth be told, he needs a fucking miracle. While the potion buoys him up a little, if he can’t get proper healing soon his strength is just going to ebb away again.

“Asum. Tofor. Any word from them?”

Sherri shakes her head, her eyes wide behind her glasses. “You haven’t been gone the full two hours. I can leave a message up top—”

“You can’t go up there?”

“It’s all coming down.” Sherri looks up at the ceiling. While it’s very solid stone, the sound of the city falling is still audible. “The trapdoor’s clear—the protection spells are holding that far, at least—but if anything too big falls, I don’t know if we’ll be able to move it.”

“Take them and get out of here,” Gilmore says, pointing at Salda and wincing as he does so.

“Like hell.”

“Gilmore… did you find my husband?” Salda asks tentatively.

“I’m sorry, my lady. He’s gone.”

She starts crying, sobs that she tries to muffle in her sleeve, attempting not to disturb the children.

“Sherri, you have to go,” Gilmore tries again.

“Like all _nine_ hells.” Sherri’s got her hands on his chest now, making a careful inspection of his wounds. “Wound” seems like far too small a word for it. It’s a gash, a gouge, a chasm. “I’m _not_ letting you go now, Shaun. We’ve built so much together.”

“And now it’s falling down.”

“And you know how we'll rebuild it? _Together_.” She smacks his cheek lightly, her small palm making a ladylike _splat_ sound on his skin. “If you think for a second that Vox Machina aren’t out there right now looking for you, or doing their best to take those—those scaly _shitheads_ down, then you’re more delirious than you should rightly be. And if you think for a second that you and I aren’t going to get on with our own life’s work just like they are, just because of this—”

“Sherri,” Gilmore interrupts her. “Don’t wake the children.”

She realizes how loud her voice is getting and lowers her volume. “You’re going to be fine. I’m going to give you some special delicious elf bread to make the pain go away—” Gilmore snickers at this; he knows what goes into ‘special delicious elf bread’ “—and you’re going to rest. When Asum and Tofor get back I’ll send one of them to find more potions and a decent damn bandage.”

“I can go looking for potions,” Salda unexpectedly volunteers.

“You’re mad,” Sherri says.

“My husband’s dead and my city’s falling apart. It would be strange if I _weren’t_ mad.” Salda stands up, smooths her clothes, and selects a small hand crossbow from the tiny armory. “Tell me what I’m looking for.”

“You—” Sherri stops, wordless.

“The blue ones,” Gilmore says. “Rounded base, long neck. Should be behind the counter, if they’re not all broken on the floor.”

“Right.” Salda’s gone in an instant, moving far faster than Gilmore could credit given the ornate heavy dress that she’s wearing.

“Great. We’re going to be out of monarchy by dawn at this rate,” Sherri says, covering Gilmore’s wound with cloth spelled sterile out of the healer’s kit stashed behind the weapons rack. When Gilmore built this little bunker he’d done so without ever truly expecting to use it. He’s glad that he did—or rather, that Sherri sat him down when they were drawing up the plans for the shop and informed him that he was going to.

“There’s still the children,” Gilmore says.

“And I will protect them as far as I can. But Shaun, if I have to choose—”

Gilmore’s eyes snap wide open. “You are _not_ choosing me over them. If something happens, you grab them and you get as far away as you can.”

“But—”

“You _leave_ me.”

Incredibly, Sherri laughs. “That’s my Shaun. If you’d agreed I would’ve known you were _way_ too far gone to bring back.” She knots a bandage to hold the cloth in place and then starts soaking chunks of elf bread in water to feed to him.

Gilmore can only take a little before his stomach begins to protest, but it’s enough to make the world gently hazy around the edges. Salda returns from above; there’s a brief exchange between the two women and then Sherri lifts his head, feeding him a second potion. Gilmore can tell from the taste that it’s another mild one. It gives him a little more energy, though, enough to resettle himself on the blanket and roll onto his side.

“Sherri…”

“Shaun?”

“Tell Vax—”

She squeezes his hand fiercely. “Tell him _yourself_.”

As he curls in on himself and closes his eyes, Gilmore hears the crash and thud of stones falling overhead, and the unmistakable _whoosh_ of a fire igniting. His spellbooks, his clothes, and all he’s worked to bring to Emon for the benefit of others. He can’t remember at what heat gold melts, crystals shatter, potions boil, but they are surely all reaching that point.

All he can think of now is that he’s finally found his own breaking point, but at least he fought for it as long as he could.


End file.
